CIA report warned assassination programme might backfire

WikiLeaks
today, Thursday 18 December, publishes a review by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) of its "High Value Target" (HVT)
assassination programme. The report weighs the pros and cons
of killing "insurgent" leaders in assassination plots. After
the report was prepared, US drone strike killings rose to an
all-time high.

The report discusses assassination
operations (by various states) against the Taliban,
al-Qa'ida, the FARC, Hizbullah, the PLO, HAMAS, Peru's
Shining Path, the Tamil's LTTE, the IRA and Algeria's FLN.
Case studies are drawn from Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and
Thailand.

The assessment was prepared by the CIA's Office
of Transnational Issues (OTI). Its role is to provide “the
most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law
enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support”.
The report is dated 7 July 2009, six months into Leon
Panetta's term as CIA chief, and not long after CIA analyst
John Kiriakou blew the whistle on the torture of CIA
detainees. Kiriakou is still in prison for shedding light on
the CIA torture programme.

Following the politically
embarrassing exposure of the CIA's torture practices and the
growing cost of keeping people in detention indefinitely,
the Obama administration faced a crucial choice in its
counter-insurgency strategy: should it kill, capture, or do
something else entirely?

Perceived benefits of
assassinating insurgent leaders

Evidence for
successful assassinations is slight. One of the few examples
claimed to have had positive results is the assassination of
Colombia's FARC leaders Raul Reyes and Ivan Rios, which is
thought to have eroded the coherency of the FARC. Similarly,
morale of the rank and file of HAMAS is said to have
weakened as a result of the assassination of its founder and
co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi by
Israeli missile attacks in 2004. The CIA report nevertheless
pointed out that “HAMAS' highly disciplined nature, social
service network and reserve of respected leaders allowed it
to reorganize after the killing..."

The CIA claimed that
the paranoia its assassination programme was generating
could be helpful: “HVT operations typically force the
remaining leaders to increase their security discipline,
which may compromise a leader's effectiveness.” HVT
operations had forced Osama bin Laden to stay in hiding,
rely on low-tech communications and avoid meeting his
subordinates. The CIA considered that this had “affected
his ability to command his organization”. Bin Laden was
seen to be isolated and out of command. Bin Laden's
assassination in May 2011 occurred as President Obama
prepared to run for his second term in office.

The
assassination of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader
Abu Laith Al-Libi and his deputy in Waziristan in January
2008 by a US missile strike informed the report's 'benefits'
analysis. The CIA analysts considered that it resulted in
“probably hindering the group's merger with al-Qa'ida”.
The LIFG was dismantled a year after this report was
written. Many of its top leaders subsequently became key
members of al-Qa'ida. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/libyan-islamic-fighting-group-leaders)

CIA's 'pruning' strategy

The secret
assessment also goes into what it calls “The Pruning
Approach”, where individuals within the insurgency group
are selected for killing so as to affect the organization.
Rather than killing senior commanders, it is sometimes more
effective to kill individuals who are important to core
functions. The Pruning Approach, CIA analysts state, can be
“used to remove effective mid-level leaders, protect
incompetent leaders or restore them to positions of
authority, separate insurgent personalities from potential
sources of government sponsorship, or protect human sources
that are collecting intelligence on networks.”

The
report acknowledges that the effect of assassinating
insurgent groups' leaders is sometimes lessened by
organizations' command structure and succession planning.
This is said to be a problem both in relation to al-Qa'ida
in Iraq and to the Taliban.

"The Taliban’s military
structure blends a top-down command system with an
egalitarian Afghan tribal structure that rules by consensus,
making the group more able to withstand HVT operations."
Al-Qa'ida's less centralized structure meant they were able
to “weather leadership losses such as the death of
Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.” He was killed by US forces in Iraq
in June 2006.

In its key findings, the report warns of
the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High
Level Targets (HLT), a prediction that has been proven
right. “The potential negative effect of HLT operations
include increasing the level of insurgent support […],
strengthening an armed group's bonds with the population,
radicalizing an insurgent group's remaining leaders,
creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter,
and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that
favor the insurgents.”

Capturing HVTs instead is not
necessarily a desirable option from the CIA's perspective.
Drawing on the CIA-assisted capture of Nelson Mandela and
the ANC leader's 27-year sentence, which he served in an
Apartheid prison, the report concludes that: "Capturing
leaders may have a limited psychological impact on a group
if members believe that captured leaders will eventually
return to the group [...] or if those leaders are able to
maintain their influence while in government custody, as
Nelson Mandela did while incarcerated in South Africa.
(S//NF)"

Assassinations by drone strike escalated to an
all-time high a year after the CIA report was written.
According to findings by the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism, 751 people were killed in drone strikes that
year, compared with 471 in 2009 and 363 in 2011.

Drawing
on the experience of assassination programmes in Thailand,
the report warns that High Value Target assassinations "can
capture the attention of policymakers and military planners
to the extent that a government loses its strategic
perspective on the conflict or neglects other key aspects of
counterinsurgency".

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